Have You Lost Friends to Covid?

Updated on June 10, 2021

By Jill Chapin

During the height of the pandemic last year, many millions of creative friends and family devised ways to be together as safely as possible, determined to continue face to face contact in as harmless a way as workable.

Some met on lawn chairs in their front yard and enjoyed early evening cocktails and conversations with their neighbors.  Many had regular backyard dinners with friends, bringing in restaurant food and sitting safely apart from each other.  And walks around the neighborhood with friends all wearing masks, kept our treasured connections alive.

All of this was done before the vaccine.  After the covid shots were administered, people should have been confident of their protection, and indeed most were.  They didn’t worry if the unvaccinated were among them because after all, that’s what the vaccine was meant to protect us against.  Yet there is a slice of the population who now feel a disinclination to be among their once close unvaccinated friends, even though their courage was evident pre-vaccine.

Why? 

Could it be the news media who are relentlessly pushing vaccinations while overtly ridiculing and marginalizing those who simply choose to follow the once gold standard of the FDA in requiring years for a Phase III trial – not months – before rolling out a new drug?

There are two undeniable parallel facts: First, we are enduring a pandemic and want to take anything offered to allow us to hug our loved ones again.  Second, these injections have been introduced into the population for only a few months; therefore it’s too soon to identify any long-term side effects that are at present currently unknown, something even the CDC acknowledges. 

With esteemed physicians such as Dr. Fauci and others offering only one side of this equation – the benefit side – and not the potential adverse events which may be lifelong, is it any wonder that people who once braved being with friends and family pre-vaccine have now adopted a disdain and lack of respect for those who simply aren’t ready for this shot?

Would they soften their opinion of the unvaccinated if they saw even one interview with other highly respected virologists, epidemiologists, scientists or doctors who offer compelling reasons to at least listen to what long-term side effects might await us?  Do Americans believe their voices need to be silenced or heard?  The media has done a herculean job of discrediting those who have knowledge and data around the world but are being smothered with accusations of false claims with the tenacity of white blood cells on bacteria.  Why pre-emptively discredit those before more information is learned?  What if they are right?

Concerned laymen simply prefer to research inarguably qualified people and organizations to get a perspective that may differ from what we are spoon fed in the media.

And these laymen are finding thousands of professionals who are sounding the alarm to a deaf population who can’t hear them because their voices have been muted.  Instead, Americans are urged, cajoled, shamed and threatened into getting the shots in any number of ways. But what if serious complications are occurring and the trend is not yet being reported?  Why is precautionary waiting now considered irresponsible?

If we were given an opportunity to hear genuine concerns expressed, perhaps those who opt to vilify the skeptical might soften their opinion and resist the media’s ongoing attempt to marginalize those who are simply interested in facts presented from a wide variety of medical professionals.  Far too many have grave concerns about what they perceive as the wholesale brainwashing of a population because our media refuse to provide balanced reporting.

Then maybe those who have seemingly lost some friends to covid might be able to reclaim their once close relationship.

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